A & E SERIES : ‘RAINBOW’: INTRIGUING LOOK AT JOSEPHINE BAKER

Cable’s valuable Arts & Entertainment Network launches its new series of biographies at 7 tonight with an intriguing film on Josephine Baker, the St. Louis-born black entertainer who became the rage of Paris.

Some of the programs in this lengthy A & E series--studies of Tennessee Williams, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Liv Ullmann and F. Scott Fitzgerald fill out the week--have already aired on American TV. Others, such as tonight’s “Josephine Baker: Chasing A Rainbow” from Britain, have not. It won an international Emmy and New York Film Festival award after premiering on Britain’s Channel Four network in 1986.

Like most good biographies, this one is as much a treatise on the times as it is on one individual, for Baker’s life and career were very much shaped by the social and political forces of her day. The coffee-skinned Baker, who died in 1975 at age 69, led a fascinating life, finding in Europe the soaring fame unavailable to her in the United States.

This is an eclectic story, ranging from Baker’s participation in the French Resistance during World War II to a noisy racial incident involving her at New York’s Stork Club.

In a sense, she was always on stage, starting from her success in Paris even as a girl. She was one of the first nude dancers at the Folies Bergere, and the documentary contains remarkable footage of her famous banana dance from the 1927 revue. The small piece of film was discovered in a New Jersey garage and is just one of the rare film sequences that make up this well-crafted 90-minute profile.

“Chasing A Rainbow” is told straightforwardly and--in true British documentary style--sometimes dryly, almost as a counterpoint to Baker’s own outrageousness. The film makers are said to have plowed through archives and private collections everywhere; indeed their search yielded some rich material that is used in conjunction with anecdotes from people who knew Baker. One would have hoped, however, for more from Baker herself.

In the film’s small samples of her singing, she sounds remarkably like Edith Piaf. But apparently there was really no one else quite like Baker. After a long period in decline, she returned to Paris for one last triumph in 1975, starring in her own critically acclaimed show, “Josephine.”

Three days later, she died in her sleep of a cerebral hemorrhage. One of her friends said at the time: “I think she died of joy.”